The world will not end in 2012

Did the ancient Maya believe that the world would come to an end on December 21st, in the year 2012? Do the modern Maya believe the world will end in 2012? Do the many Mayan shamans of today, who still navigate the Mayan calendar believe the world will end in 2012?

Absolutely not! The ancient Maya never believed this and neither do the Mayan people of today.

Upon reading anthropological studies, books about the Mayan Calendar, research about the Wa'ix (Mayan number zero), and interviewing Mayan shamans, one will quickly realize that the Mayans of the past, just as the Mayans of today never thought this way. So what did the Mayans of the past think and what do the Mayans of today believe?

The Mayan calendar is cyclical. If you look at it you will notice that it is shaped like a circle. If you have ever walked in a circle you will notice that you continuously repeat your trip. The Mayan calendar along with the Mayan number 0 is not about the end. It is about the beginning. The Mayan calendar is more closely related to the beginning of a cycle than the end. It is about the birth or dawn of life. It is not about the end of life as we know it. It is about creation.

The Mayan calendar is based on the number 20. Upon arriving at the 20th day or the “end” of a month you are arriving at the “beginning” or in other words you arrive at the number 0. However, the “beginning” is synonymous with completeness in Mayan thought. To the Mayans a person is complete if he or she has 20 fingers (10 fingers and 10 toes). Over and over again the number 20 and the number 0 are related to the idea of completeness. The “end” of the Mayan calender is really the completion of a natural cycle. It is not the total destruction of life as we know it. This idea of completion, birth, creation, and cyclical thought can be found in the interconnectedness between the calendar, the Mayan number zero, the Tzutujil Mayan concept of Jaloj-K'exoj, the Mayan rhombus, ancient Mayan carvings in stone, Mayan observations of nature, and the corn plant.

Fortunato Pablo Mendoza, a modern Ajq'ij or shaman in Todos Santos describes it quite eloquently using the metaphor of the snake. According to Mr. Mendoza the end of the calendar can be thought of as the end of a cycle similar to that undergone by a snake. After a certain period of time the snake sheds its skin. This happens every so often. It is a part of the natural cycle of the animal and serves the purpose of cleansing the snake of impurities. It is not the end of the snake. It is the birth of the snake's new skin.  

Another good example of this belief can be seen in the example of the corn plant. When a corn plant matures it bears fruit and “dies”. In the “death” of the corn plant, its fruit dries up and becomes seeds. These seeds drop to the Earth and give rise to the next generation. The death of the individual corn plant produces the next generation of many corn plants. This is really what the Mayan calendar and Mayan number zero are all about. It is the story of reproduction, creation, and genesis. It is not the end but the beginning.

According to the anthropologist Robert S. Carlsen and Martin Prechtel, a Native American who became a practicing shaman with the Tzutujil people of  Santiago de Atitlan, this idea is well explained in the concept of Jaloj-K'exoj. According to them Jaloj-K'exoj is,

...is derived from two words, jal and k’ex, both of which denote types of change. Jal is the change manifested by a thing as it evolves through its individual life cycle. Traditionally, Mayans have believed that life arises from death. Consistent with this belief, beginning in death, jal is the change manifested in the transition through life, through birth, through youth and old age, and finally back into death. Symbolically, jal is change on the outside, at the ‘husk’. By contrast, k’ex occurs at the ‘seed’, and refers to generational change. While maintaining a distinct concern with ancestral origin, k’ex relates to the transfer, hence the continuity, of life, and may account for anthropological observations of Maya ‘ancestor worship’ (e.g. Wasserstrom 1983: 77). Moreover, it relates to what might best be described as a form of reincarnation, an integral aspect of Maya religion which has by and large been excluded from scholarly consideration (Ruz 1973; Mondloch 1980; and Coggins 1989 are among the exceptions). K’ex is a process of making the new out of the old. At the same time, just as a single plant produces multiple offspring, k’ex is change from one into many. Together jal and k’ex form a concentric system of change within change, a single system of transformation and renewal (26).

So, will the world end in 2012? No, the world will not end. The cycle of the calendar will end and the birth of the next cycle will begin.

If you'd like to read more about this concept and it's interconnectedness to other Mayan systems of thought, you can read a more detailed description of it here.